Unitree's $900 million IPO was oversubscribed 8,288 times, even though its own filing admits the robots can't do real work

Retail investors oversubscribed Unitree's Shanghai IPO 8,288 times, the largest such multiple for any Chinese listing in recent memory. The 9.78 million accounts that participated ordered 53.64 billion shares at 150.80 yuan each, a total bid value of roughly 8.09 trillion yuan, or about $1.2 trillion. They were chasing a $900 million offering, meaning retail demand alone exceeded the deal size by a factor of roughly 1,300. The lot-winning rate was 0.018%, lower than most China IPOs this year. 1 2

The IPO values Unitree at 219 times its 2025 earnings and 36 times its sales. 1 If the share price stays flat, earnings must grow 4.38 times just to bring that price-to-earnings ratio down to 50. 2 Yet the company's own prospectus tells a different story about where those earnings come from. According to the filing, the majority of humanoid robot demand originates from universities and government-backed initiatives, with applications mainly in education, research, and demonstrations. Challenges around reliability, dexterity, and endurance still limit broader commercial adoption. 2

"Unitree generates much of its sales from research and demonstrations, but wider application is still far away," said Wang Zhuo, partner at Shanghai Zhuozhu Investment Management. 1

Revenue quadrupled while profit collapsed

Unitree's revenue rose more than fourfold to 1.7 billion yuan ($252 million) in 2025, with humanoid robots generating 867.8 million yuan and becoming the company's largest business segment. 3 The company sold 5,632 humanoid robots across 2023 through 2025 combined, then shipped roughly 5,900 in the first half of 2026 alone. 3 4

But first-quarter 2026 profit excluding one-off items fell 52.6 percent to 40.3 million yuan, even as revenue climbed 68.5 percent. 3 Revenue is accelerating while profit is contracting. The company is selling more robots at thinner margins, and its filing says the buyers are primarily research institutions paying for demonstration hardware, not commercial customers paying for productive labor. Xiangcai Securities put the implication plainly: Unitree needs to "keep growing rapidly to justify its rich valuations." 1

The IPO leader is not the shipment leader

Unitree is not the top humanoid robot maker by volume. In the first half of 2026, AgiBot, a Shanghai-based startup founded by a former Huawei prodigy, shipped roughly 8,400 humanoid robots for a 44 percent global market share. Unitree shipped about 5,900 units for a 31 percent share. AgiBot's shipments grew 562 percent year-over-year, overtaking Unitree for the first time. 4 5

The two companies together account for three-quarters of every humanoid robot on Earth, and Chinese vendors account for 97 percent of global shipments. Chinese buyers absorb 85 percent of demand. 4 The market is overwhelmingly domestic, which matters because Unitree's U.S. revenue accounted for 13.3 percent of sales last year, and that channel now faces a wall. In late July, the FCC moved to ban new imports of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, citing national security risks. The order names Unitree directly. 3 4

What $1.2 trillion of bids actually tells you

The strategic investor roster adds to the narrative pull. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company, acquired 933,399 shares for 140.8 million yuan as part of the strategic allotment. 2 Meituan held a 9.65 percent stake before the offering; HongShan Capital held 7.11 percent. 2 The DeepSeek stake gives retail investors a story about embodied AI to anchor their bids: China's most prominent AI model lab backing its leading humanoid robot maker.

But the filing undercuts that story. Training humanoid models requires physical-world datasets that are expensive and limited, and demonstrations using hardware have not established consistent performance for factory or service tasks. 2 The technology that investors are paying 219 times earnings for is, by the company's own description, not yet doing the work that would generate the revenue to support that valuation.

The question for anyone tracking embodied AI is whether revenue growing four times in a single year justifies a 219-times earnings multiple when profit is shrinking, the top customer base is academic, a rival is already shipping 42 percent more robots per half-year, and the company's largest overseas market just closed its door to future products. The market answered with $1.2 trillion in bids. The filing answered with a caveat about reliability, dexterity, and endurance.